Things Unsaid
by doopdoop2
Summary: Iida and Bakugou are partnered together for some sort of assignment. All they have to do is reach a man, waiting deep in the basement of a building - but they don't know his Quirk, or even the assignment's purpose. As they descend, they begin to talk. Both of them give more away than they intended - and learn far more about the other than they bargained for. (Complete.)


The assignment was aggravating in its vagueness: somewhere, deep underground (why underground?) there was a man, a single, solitary man, and the students had to reach him. They didn't have to bring him back, just get there. "You are not to harm him," Aizawa had said. "Once you reach his location, he'll give you access to the elevator. Take it back up and the assignment's done."

"If he fights us, can we harm him then?" Bakugou had asked.

"He won't fight you."

"We'll see about that!"

But it made Iida wonder what the man's Quirk was, that he could pose such a challenge for them without the man even engaging them in combat. Unless the building itself was the challenge?

Not all of the class could even do this test - it would take too long, Aizawa told them - so he'd picked half who'd be doing an alternate test instead. There would be long intervals between the pairs to make sure a fast duo did not catch up to a slow one. And there were cameras, Aizawa added, but they only transmitted visuals, not sound; the class was only going to watch the other groups' highlights once everyone had finished. There would be no students watching the others while waiting their turn, as there sometimes had been in the past.

All of these strange specifications made Iida deeply curious. He was paired with Bakugou, and wasn't sure how to feel about that. Bakugou was smart and quick-thinking - and powerful, but that went without saying - yet he tended to rely too much on his Quirk, which Iida suspected would be of little help here.

"How about we blast our way down, Four-Eyes?" Bakugou said, as soon as they began. "Seems the quickest way to me." Iida knew he wasn't asking permission so much as voicing the thought to himself. If Bakugou wanted to do something, he'd do it, no matter what Iida said.

"The floor and walls are made of what looks like solid cement," Iida said. "I'm not sure you could even break through. Besides-"

His ears rang with explosions. Iida winced and covered them, wondering if this would give him temporary hearing loss. "Warn me next time!" he snapped, once Bakugou had finished. "That was highly inconsiderate of you!"

"Fuck this!" Bakugou said, ignoring Iida completely. His explosions hadn't even made a dent, although they'd destroyed a rug Iida hadn't even noticed was there. The building didn't look all that much like their normal practice areas: it was decorated somewhat like an office, although sparsely. There were some pictures on the walls, chairs and potted plants at the edges of the rooms. Iida wondered what, if anything, it was supposed to be representing. If it was an office building, it was the most well-fortified one he'd ever seen.

Even though they were not yet underground, there were no windows on this level. "Let's just explore a bit," Iida said, turning away from Bakugou. "Keep your guard up."

First, Iida looked for access to the elevator Aizawa had mentioned, hoping for a shortcut. Obviously for them to take it straight down hadn't been what Aizawa had in mind, but Iida felt that wouldn't have gone against the letter of the task, only the spirit. Iida did not find it, although he hadn't really expected to. It would not make sense, he knew, for this test to be that easy.

As he wandered through the strange building, he heard Bakugou exploring as well, using his Quirk to blow things up every now and then. After awhile Iida heard him cry out in triumph: "Four-Eyes! Look at this!"

Bakugou had exploded yet another rug - one that had been hiding a trapdoor. The door itself took both of them pulling together to lift it - it was made of cement like everything else - but eventually it gave; beneath it was a ladder. Bakugou scrambled down before Iida even had a chance to peer through the opening to see what lay below them.

Once he was finished climbing, Bakugou let out an incredulous laugh. "What is this? We in a fucking library?"

That certainly was what it looked like to Iida. He felt a rush of nostalgia hit him at the sight: shelves as high as his head and packed with books, gray carpeting, slightly-too-bright overhead lights. Even the smell was familiar. He'd spent hours upon hours in his local library as a child, and-

"There's something over here," Bakugou shouted, startling him. Iida supposed he should be glad his partner was making at least some attempt to cooperate with him. Not as caught up in nostalgia as Iida was, Bakugou had already raced to the other end of the room. There was a door on which was posted a note. But Iida couldn't read it - it was blocked by Bakugou's head.

"'The key to this door is hidden inside a book.' Okay, fuck this," Bakugou said. He shook the door handle - locked, of course, but Iida didn't blame him for the impulse.

"That door looks just as explosion-proof as everything else here," Iida said. "I doubt you could-"

And, of course, of course, Bakugou took that as a challenge. Once again Iida didn't cover his ears in time; once again the pain made him wince. His first impulse was to actually kick Bakugou in retaliation, but Iida held back, mentally scolding himself for the thought. He and Bakugou had the same goal in this scenario, and it would be pointless to antagonize his own partner. Iida just wished Bakugou would extend the same courtesy towards him.

Completely unshockingly, the door was unharmed even after Bakugou's best attempts at blasting through. The sign floated to the ground as ashes.

"Damn it," Bakugou said. "Guess that means we have to try something else. Probably one of these is a false book." He gestured to the library behind him. "We've got to find the hidden key, right?"

Iida comprehended Bakugou's plan almost too late, and spun around just in time to see him aiming. "Bakugou," he shouted, "stop it now!"

Bakugou lowered his hand, which he'd been aiming at a shelf. "What're you screeching about?"

"Is your brilliant plan to burn all the books in the library?"

"Yeah," Bakugou said. "It's probably the fastest way to find the key."

"It's a terrible plan!" Iida said. He took a deep breath, realizing it was better to explain why than just rail at Bakugou about it - Iida could already see him bristling in self-defense. "Look, for one thing, aren't your explosions sometimes hot enough to melt or warp metal?"

"Sometimes…"

"That could damage the key - not to mention, you might explode it, and where would we be then? And," Iida went on, "this place does not look like it has good ventilation. If you start a fire, the smoke might-"

"Stop, stop!" Bakugou said. "I get it. It was a shit plan." He glared at Iida, his face contorted in an ugly frown. "No need to go on and on about it. What's your brilliant idea?"

"I say we do what's obviously expected of us," Iida said. "Check the books. As you said, one of them is probably false, with the key hidden inside. We'll find it eventually."

He braced himself for Bakugou's reaction, expecting more arguing, a fight even; but Bakugou just glanced around resignedly, as if tallying the books up. There must have been thousands. "Yeah, okay," he said. "You start on that end, I'll start over here."

Iida picked each book up, flipped through its pages, and tucked it back on the shelf - until he realized Bakugou was just tossing the books onto the floor. That was actually a better idea - it took less time, and they could easily see what shelves they'd already completed - so Iida began to do it too, although some small part of him was silently crying out at treating books in this fashion.

Though they started on opposite sides, Bakugou and Iida eventually approached each other as they both moved towards the center of the room. "Four-Eyes," Bakugou said, his tone oddly restrained, "do you feel something?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, you personally. Do you feel… different?"

Iida took stock of himself. He felt as good as he could expect given the given situation. His body seemed to be working fine, and his brain - well, he was annoyed, but who wouldn't be? "Could you be more specific?"

Bakugou just shook his head. "Can't explain it. Never mind."

They said nothing more, and eventually moved apart again as their routes took them to opposite sides of the room. Iida began to almost enjoy the task; the repetitive, thoughtless motions, coupled with the pleasant atmosphere of the library, put him into a trancelike state. He was almost disappointed when he opened up a book only to find it was hollow, with the key inside.

"Guess that's that," he said to himself. "Bakugou!"

Luckily the lock hadn't been damaged by Bakugou's explosion, and the door opened without a hitch. This time there was a staircase separating the two rooms instead of a ladder, although it only went down one floor. Iida didn't doubt there were more to follow.

The room they entered was small. There was a door at the far end, with a computer panel and keypad attached. In the center was a table with two chairs. Atop the table stood two bottles of water and a white box.

Something about the shape of the box gave Iida yet another wave of pleasant nostalgia. Then he comprehended what it reminded him of, and got a very, very bad feeling instead.

"Don't explode anything," Iida snapped, walking towards the table.

"Yeah, no fucking shit!"

Bakugou made a beeline to the door and examined the keypad intently. Iida was glad he didn't just start punching in random letters and numbers; who knew how many attempts they'd be given before they were locked out?

"I don't think I can crack this without something to go off of," Bakugou said, turning around. "There must be a clue."

Iida sat down in a chair and pulled the lid off the box. Its contents were exactly what he'd been afraid of: it was a puzzle. "I think we've got our code right here."

Bakugou came over, curious; when he looked down at the box, he shook his head in disbelief and collapsed into the chair across from Iida. "This is a joke," he said. "This has got to be a joke."

"Nope." Iida set the box in the center of the table. "This does in fact seem to be the task required of us."

The puzzle pieces were all white, though some of them had letters and numbers printed. Iida guessed there would be large gaps between the characters, rather than a paragraph of solid text. Iida estimated there were twenty or thirty characters total.

"How many pieces here, you think?" Bakugou asked, dumping the box out onto the table.

"I'd guess… five hundred?"

Bakugou laughed. "Bet you're the type who loves doing these things, aren't you."

Iida made a deliberate decision to ignore the venom in Bakugou's tone and take his words at face value. "Yes, I do love puzzles. I've done quite a few in my time. When I was younger, Tensei and I would spend whole afternoons completing them together." He glanced up at Bakugou, who seemed overwhelmed, almost bewildered by the pieces spread out across the table. Could it be that Bakugou himself had never done a puzzle? It was a thought almost too strange for Iida to comprehend, but Bakugou's expression seemed to suggest it; so Iida took pity on him and said, "It's easiest to complete the edges first, then work inward. If you help me gather the pieces with a flat side, I'll begin assembling."

"Yeah, yeah," Bakugou said, but Iida saw with some satisfaction that he was actually following the suggestion.

It was extremely slow going. Five hundred pieces, if Iida's guess was right, was not an especially large puzzle - he could do thousand piece puzzles alone in a handful of hours - but the actual challenge was the lack of pattern. The only thing they had to go off of was the shape of the pieces, meaning it took a lot of trial and error - seemingly infinite amounts of putting pieces together to see if they fit, and taking them apart when they almost inevitably did not. Iida tried to get into the same state of mind he'd been during the previous task - to clear his mind and think of it as a form of meditation - but found he could not. Iida liked puzzles, but not blank puzzles, not as a school assignment, and particularly not with Bakugou. The whole thing left a sour taste in his mouth.

"Tell me you feel weird," Bakugou said, after fifteen minutes or so of nothing but silence.

Iida paused and looked up at him. "Excuse me?"

"Your mood. How you're feeling. Is it… different? Off?"

Iida wished Bakugou had specified mood before - he'd assumed "different" had meant physical. He ran a hand through his hair and, trying to keep his tone civil, said "Can you be more specific, please?"

"You feel annoyed, right?"

"Of course," Iida said. "This task seems designed to be particularly aggravating."

"Right," Bakugou said, "but do you feel, like… more annoyed than you expected?"

That made Iida raise his eyes to look at Bakugou, who had taken his attention completely off the puzzle and was staring Iida down, his gaze impenetrable. It seemed to Iida that this wasn't a joke, that Bakugou was asking him a serious question. "I'm not sure," was all Iida could say in response.

"I'll tell you how I feel," Bakugou said. "And I'm going to be perfectly honest with you." He inhaled deeply before he spoke again. "One floor up, I was pissed as hell. Like you said, it's designed to make us mad, right? Stupid, time-consuming, pointless tasks with no shortcuts. And Quirks don't help."

"Right. There was no blasting your way through."

"Not just me. No one's Quirk would help here, for any of these tasks. Anyways, one floor up, I was pissed off. But now… Now I feel different than that. I want to… talk."

"Talk?" Iida echoed. That was the last thing he'd expected Bakugou to say. "Really?"

"Yeah, like - I want to just go on and on and on. You really don't feel the same way? You are pissed, though, I can tell. You're feeling that effect, at least." Bakugou grinned. "You screamed at me right when we walked in. You were afraid I'd destroy everything and we'd fail. You should trust me, Class Pres."

"How can I trust you when that's exactly what you wanted to do in the previous task?!"

"See, that's what I mean," Bakugou said. "You wanna yell at me, don't you? You wanna throttle me. It's affecting you, too. Whatever 'it' is."

Iida's first instinct was to continue arguing, but Bakugou spoke again: "Seriously stop and think about it for a minute. A whole minute. Tell me you don't feel something."

So, though he bitterly wanted to fight back, Iida resigned himself to a moment of self-reflection. Did he feel different? Well, as Bakugou had guessed, Iida was indeed angry, but was the anger warranted? Was it proportional to the cause? Was it in line with his usual response?

Iida wasn't sure, and that frightened him. "Do you think it's something to do with the challenge?" he asked.

Bakugou shrugged. "Aizawa never said what this guy's Quirk was, did he?"

"A Quirk that affects emotions?" Iida considered. "It's possible."

"Oh yeah, definitely," Bakugou said, flipping a puzzle piece like a coin. It bounced onto the floor. Bakugou didn't move to get it right away, and Iida knew he was being goaded; he waited a whole thirty seconds before asking Bakugou to pick the piece up, please.

"The only thing we can do in this situation," Iida said, once the piece was safely back on the table, "is do the task at hand as quickly and efficiently as possible." But his own words rang hollow. He couldn't stop running Bakugou's questions through his mind again and again. Were his emotions different? If Bakugou had noticed first, what did that mean? Was Bakugou more self-aware than Iida? Was Bakugou being affected more strongly somehow? If so, why?

"I must admit, I can't be sure of myself now," Iida said, deciding to reward Bakugou's honesty with honesty in turn. "I can't say with full certainty that I'm not emotionally affected, although I don't feel the urge to talk that you described." He paused. "But if you feel that way, you're perfectly free to, you know."

"Huh?"

"There's no harm in talking. If you take Aizawa at his word, the cameras are only recording visual, not sound. Our classmates will get an engrossing video of us doing a puzzle together."

Bakugou was quiet for a long time - five minutes or more - and Iida wondered if he'd decided not to speak after all. Bakugou was a contrary person; perhaps being invited had made the idea less appealing. Iida was lost in his own thoughts as he did the puzzle, alternately frustrated by the task at hand and intrigued by the questions Bakugou had raised, when Bakugou finally spoke again.

"You were there the day they - the day All for One was captured," he said. "Did you feel something then? Something - like this. Your emotions…"

The phrasing was awkward, but Iida knew what Bakugou meant. He remembered that day vividly. "It was awful," he said, his voice quiet. "We all felt it, I think. This feeling of dread and fear beyond anything I'd imagined before. Horror, too. Disgust. It was… visceral. I do wonder if it was a Quirk of his." Then something else occurred to Iida. "Still - I felt something similar from Stain, though to a much lesser extent - and Stain's Quirk was entirely unrelated. So perhaps it was not a Quirk of All for One's, either."

"Stain," Bakugou echoed. "You don't talk about him much."

There was something in his voice that made Iida look up. Bakugou's gaze, piercing and direct, was focused on Iida's face; he wondered how much Bakugou knew about what had happened that day. "I prefer not to," Iida said, looking away. "I'm sure you understand that."

"Tell me what you mean about Stain. You're the one who brought him up, after all."

This, Iida realized, must have been what Bakugou'd been describing earlier: Iida felt the words being drawn out of him, almost against his will; it seemed easier to speak than remain silent. "We all felt it then, too. Midoriya, Todoroki, myself, even the professional heroes that were there felt it. Even injured and outnumbered, Stain made us all… I don't know how to describe it. He was terrifying, but it was impossible not to listen. We were all frozen."

"What a funny coincidence that was," Bakugou said. "The three of you all happening to meet Stain. Completely by chance."

"I'm not sure what you're implying, Bakugou," Iida said slowly. "It actually was a coincidence that they showed up. Midoriya was on a train that got derailed in Hosu, and Todoroki was there with his father."

"Was it a coincidence you showed up, too?"

"Of course not," Iida said, fully aware he was taking Bakugou's bait. "I think most people understood my motivations as soon as they learned I was taking an internship in Hosu. I'm sure you did too." Iida paused, looking for a reaction, but when Bakugou said nothing he went on: "I was a naive fool with nothing but revenge on my mind. I'm lucky I didn't die that day."

"Yeah, I can imagine your thought process," Bakugou said, shaking his head as if in disbelief. "You were just going to waltz in and challenge the man who defeated your brother - beat that guy in a fight and casually take him into custody, no big deal."

"That was never my plan," Iida said. "I told you I had revenge on my mind."

Bakugou looked at him through narrowed eyes. "So what…"

"I was going to kill him. That was the plan."

Iida had not thought this revelation would be all that surprising, to be honest. He did not wish for Stain's death now that the man was in custody - although sometimes Iida remembered the video that went viral, and felt his hands clench into fists at the thought that Stain might even now be influencing others. No, Iida no longer wished for his death, but at the time - when thinking of Tensei's injury still brought tears to his eyes - Iida certainly had been ready to kill him in whatever godforsaken alleyway their paths finally crossed. It was not only his brother who would be avenged, after all. Stain had been about to kill Native, and had killed many others. He deserved death. So Iida thought that, in his situation, others would almost certainly have felt the same way he had - that his classmates would have just assumed his attentions all along.

Yet Bakugou's reaction seemed to suggest this came as a surprise to him. His mouth fell open, his eyes widened, and for a long moment he just stared at Iida, who felt his skin crawl with self-consciousness. "Are you suggesting he did not deserve it?" Iida asked, when too much time had passed without a word. "Would you have-"

"Yes, I would've felt the same, and yes, he did deserve it," Bakugou said, visibly struggling to regain his composure. "That's not the issue!"

"What is?"

"You!" Bakugou laughed harshly. "I can't believe you - Mr. Straitlaced, Mr. Follow the Rules..." He shook his head. "I can't imagine it. I wish I had been there."

"If you had been, I can't say you would have made the fight any shorter," Iida said. "I know your abilities are great, but he was trouble even for Todoroki, Midoriya and myself."

Iida stopped. He'd been speaking without thinking, letting his hands mess with the puzzle while he ran his mouth, and he'd gone too far. He certainly hoped the Quirk had something to do with one's emotions, because if it didn't, he had no excuse. And of course Bakugou had caught it; Bakugou was the last one who'd ever let something like that slide. "Don't you mean he was trouble for Endeavor?" Bakugou said, showing his teeth.

"Excuse me. I misspoke. Of course that's what I mean."

"It wasn't Endeavor who did it at all, was it," Bakugou snarled. "I should have guessed, when the three of you came back all tight, best friends all of a sudden, you, you were-"

"Bakugou-"

"-laughing behind our backs as you kept the secret from all of us. You're all so modest! It's so very heroic of you!"

"It wasn't done out of modesty, let me tell you. The chief of police-"

"I'm sure there was a good reason to hide it from all the dipshits in the general public and the press," Bakugou said, his voice heavy with anger, "but from your classmates? Wasn't this sort of thing bound to come out eventually? I'm surprised it took this long."

"Bakugou, why-"

"And when you came to rescue me, you were all laughing in my face, weren't you? Of course it was the three of you behind that too, it only makes sense. You were laughing, saying, we didn't need to be rescued, did we, we rescued ourselves-"

"Bakugou!" Iida stood and slammed his hands down on the table. The motion knocked some puzzle pieces to the floor, but Iida didn't give them a second thought. "Get ahold of your emotions if you want to pass this exam! My motivation for rescuing you was nothing like that. It didn't even have anything to do with you!" He adjusted his glasses and sat back down, shifting his attention back to the puzzle. "It entirely involved making Midoriya and our other classmates returned safely. Not one moment of it was spent laughing at you. I'm honestly surprised, and more than a little offended, that you think so lowly of me."

Bakugou said nothing, but Iida could hear his breathing, fast and shallow. Over the course of a few minutes it evened out and slowed; when Iida glanced up, Bakugou was doing the puzzle too.

He didn't speak for a while, and Iida got the sense that what he'd said actually had calmed Bakugou somewhat. Finally he said, "This is gonna take forever."

"It… it will certainly take a while," Iida said, sighing. "This is a cruel test."

"I'm gonna use the bathroom," Bakugou said, getting to his feet.

"The bathroom?"

"Yeah, I saw one up in the library-looking section." Bakugou pointed upwards for emphasis. "Would be really cruel of them to make a challenge like this without one."

Despite himself, Iida laughed.

* * *

In the end it took them, by Iida's approximation, roughly two hours to complete the puzzle. He was honestly surprised how smoothly things went after their initial fraught discussion. They chatted, but never left casual topics - school, their classmates, current events - and managed to avoid becoming emotional again. The puzzle revealed a code, which Bakugou punched into the keypad. The door opened; there was yet another staircase. They went down side by side.

Iida hadn't been entirely sure there was an external force at play that affected his emotions, but as he climbed down the stairs the feeling grew and grew until he had no doubts left. It was hard to describe with words, but it was much like Bakugou had described: Iida had the compulsion to say every thought that came into his head, without hesitation or filter; it was as if his emotions were boiling just under the surface, ready to break through at any time. Iida felt like crying and shouting and hiding all at once.

"I feel it," he said, distantly knowing how stupid he sounded but unable to censor himself. "I feel it, like you said you felt before - it's strange, I don't like it - I know it's not made up-"

Bakugou's face was crumpled up in fear or anger, his hands clenched into fists. "I hate this," Bakugou said. "When we get to the guy who's doing this, I'm gonna blow his head off. I can't stand this feeling."

The stairs levelled out at last into a long hallway. As before, the floor, ceiling and walls were all made of cement - but this time there was no decoration, no attempt to make the place seem any less dreary. The concrete made it feel like a parking garage, but the width of the hallway was more reminiscent of a narrow cave.

Eventually the path split in two. Both options looked identical to Iida, and there was no clue as to which one was correct. He groaned, resisting the urge to bang his head against the wall. "Bakugou, I think it's a maze."

"Fuck!" Bakugou kicked the wall, then grunted in pain. "Let me just fucking kill myself now, because there's no way I can make it through here!"

"I know a strategy," Iida said. "If you choose a wall and follow it, eventually you'll reach the end with minimal backtracking. I've never actually tried it, so I hope the logic of it holds up." He hadn't meant to say the last part aloud, but felt as if he could hold nothing back. It was a terrible feeling, but also somehow freeing; Iida did not worry about censoring his thoughts, because he simply could not.

"What if you choose the wrong way? What if you go right and the exit is the first left?"

"Then you'll go through the entire maze, but at least you'll only do it once," Iida said. "As I said, I'm not certain how correct that is."

"It's probably better than random guessing," Bakugou said darkly. He looked at Iida. "Left or right?"

"I'm surprised you're not suggesting we split up."

"This place gives me the creeps," Bakugou said. "Even if you weren't exactly my first choice of partner, I'd pick being with you over being alone in an instant. Besides, knowing Aizawa, whoever gets there first will have to wait for the other one anyways. It's pointless to split up."

"And if we do have to fight-"

"I don't actually think we will," Bakugou said. "That would make this too interesting. Whoever designed this test must really love watching us be bored out of our skulls. So," he repeated, "left or right?"

"If it's all the the same to you, I choose… left."

"Left it is."

Bakugou placed his hand on the far left wall as if to anchor himself there, and they set out side by side. If Iida wanted to be silent, he found he could do it, but it took all of his concentration, and after a few minutes it began to give him a headache. Then he realized he'd said that out loud, and nearly screamed in frustration; even when focusing all of his energy into it, he couldn't actually hold anything back.

"Me neither," Bakugou said, speaking through gritted teeth. "This fucking sucks. A thought enters my head and I say it before I can even think. I want to rip my tongue out."

"I really don't mind if you speak," Iida said. "If you speak I can listen - I don't feel as much impulse to keep speaking. One of us should speak, or I feel like we'll both go insane."

"But I don't wanna talk, that's my point! I'll end up saying things I don't want to say, and there's no way to avoid it!" He shook his head. "I hate this. You talk if you think it will help."

"What kind of a Quirk do you think this is, even?" Iida asked. "Obviously it's affecting our ability to control our responses-"

"I think that's it, more or less," Bakugou said. "No filter. If a thought's there, bam, I say it."

"I'm unable to - to regulate my emotions," Iida said, rubbing his eyes. "I'm overwhelmed."

"This is the test, isn't it?" Bakugou said. "To see if we can do frustrating tasks in an even more frustrating environment. Probably Aizawa selected us as partners because…" He trailed off, his face a grimace.

"...Because of our conflicting personalities? Is that what you were going to say?"

"Something like that," Bakugou said, frowning. "The people he picked to do this challenge - did you remember any of the other pairs?"

"Aoyama and…" Iida struggled to remember. "Todoroki, I think. Momo and Ashido. Midoriya…"

"No," Bakugou said quickly, "Deku's doing the other one. I wonder if there's something about the ones doing this test all that sets us apart." He laughed sharply. "Are we the ones Aizawa thinks need therapy?"

"Who knows?" Iida said. "It may be nothing. The other test could be just as difficult."

"Not in the same way," Bakugou said, "unless it's another person with an identical Quirk. I hate this. - I can't stop thinking about what you said up there, about wanting to kill Stain."

Iida blinked, surprised, at the sudden change in topic. "What?"

"You always seemed so easy to understand at first." Bakugou stopped walking, his hand still resting on the wall. Iida stopped too, wondering what was going on. "I thought I knew you. I thought I understood you. But from the very first day, the more I learned about you, the more I realized I was wrong."

"Bakugou, let's keep walking," Iida said, trying to keep his tone light - though he still felt an undercurrent of annoyance they'd stopped at all. "We shouldn't-"

"Let me talk!" Bakugou growled. "You're pissing me off! You say, 'Talk if you want, it's fine, I don't mind' then you do nothing but interrupt me and try to push me around!"

"Can't you talk and walk at the same time?!" Iida snapped, knowing that under normal circumstances his patience would not be quite so threadbare. "I'm listening, but I'd rather not be here all night!"

That seemed to take Bakugou by surprise, because he shut his mouth and began walking.

"Now you can talk," Iida said. "Talk and walk. Certainly you can do both?"

"Shut the fuck up," Bakugou growled, though he didn't stop moving now that he'd begun once again. "You bug the shit out of me, you know that?"

"I'm sure I do," Iida said, rolling his eyes. "I'm not going to waste any energy trying to please you."

"That's what bugs me so much," Bakugou said. "You don't care what I think - you don't care what anyone thinks-"

"That's certainly not true."

"And you casually just throw it out there that you wanted to actually kill someone, like you think it won't change anything?"

"Did it change anything?" Iida asked, frowning. "You keep coming back to that. I don't understand why that revelation is having such a profound effect on you."

"I wonder if you actually would've done it," Bakugou said. "You - you went in there thinking you were going to kill him, but if you'd had the chance, you think you would've been able to?"

"I cannot know for certain," Iida said stiffly, "but I certainly believed at the time that I would be capable."

"That's the thing about shit like that," Bakugou said. "You might think one thing about yourself, but when the time comes, how you actually react might be completely different. You might have thought you'd be able to do it-"

"But the time had come," Iida said. "I was fighting to kill, not fighting to take him captive. It didn't work out that way, but that was my intention."

"If you'd had him on the ground in front of you, if you disarmed him and you were standing there, looking down on him, would you have been able to do it?"

"I…" Iida huffed in annoyance. "I honestly think I would have been able to. You really don't believe me?"

"I wouldn't have," Bakugou said, voice quiet. "I wouldn't have been able to, that's why - that's why I'm-" He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "God, listen to me! I'm treating you like a therapist or something!"

"I will promise you, Bakugou," Iida said, "that nothing you say to me in here will leave this building, if you make me the same promise. I wouldn't repeat what you say anyways but I don't know that you'll do the same." He hadn't meant to say the second sentence aloud. "Shit."

"Alright, you fucker," Bakugou said, "I'll promise. I wasn't planning on blabbing either. I'm good at keeping secrets."

"Thank you. I deeply appreciate that. I've told you things today that I'd really rather weren't spread."

"I like you being honest," Bakugou said. "I like hearing you swear. It's different. You have this whole other side to you, the side that isn't just a goody-goody - the side that does crazy shit. You do your best to hide it from the world-"

"I promise you," Iida said, "it is not my intention to hide anything."

"Yeah, well, it seems like that's what you're doing," Bakugou said. "Like you try to be boring and shit, when actually you're a - a pretty interesting guy." The words seemed difficult for him to say, as if he was doing his best to resist the urge to compliment Iida. "Most people try to seem more interesting than they are, not less."

"I'm no more or less interesting than I seem, I assure you," Iida said. He was deeply glad Bakugou was the one doing most of the talking; listening seemed to prevent the Quirk (or whatever it was) from affecting Iida. Bakugou, he suspected, would be resentful later at having taken the brunt of the Quirk in this way, but that was a risk Iida was willing to take.

They turned the corner onto a dead end, but did not stop - just continued onwards, always on the left.

"You don't know, I guess, that you do seem more interesting, the more people get to know you. I hate this," Bakugou said, rubbing his eyes. "I'm way, way too fucking close to saying shit I don't wanna say. You talk!"

"Or what?"

"Or I'll fight you!" Bakugou said, stopping again and spinning where he stood to face Iida. "Talk, damn it!"

"No," Iida said, "I'm too curious about what you were going to say." And, though it made him feel queasy, he forced himself to bite his tongue and not say a word. He kept walking, and after a moment he heard Bakugou resume walking too.

"Talk!" Bakugou barked.

Iida was silent.

"It's not fucking fair." Bakugou's voice was quiet and angry, and Iida didn't dare glance over his shoulder to see the expression of hatred Bakugou would almost certainly be wearing. "How come this is affecting me more than you? I felt it before you did, and I'm feeling it more now. Talk, damn it! How come you can just shut your mouth like that? I feel like I'm gonna vomit if I try!"

Iida kept walking.

"I bet Aizawa was lying about the cameras - I bet they are recording sound too, and this whole thing is just a ploy to find out what secrets we've been hiding. I don't trust him, ever since that first day when he said he'd expel someone, I don't trust anything he says. Probably now everyone's gonna know about you and Deku and Half-and-Half fighting Stain, that the story with Endeavor was all a lie."

Iida kept walking.

"Everyone's gonna know you're the one who let it slip, and Deku's gonna hate you for it - how does that idea make you feel?"

Iida paused. "Midoriya won't hate me," he said. "Even if everything you say comes true, Midoriya won't hate me. He'll be understanding. Damn it," Iida added, sighing, "I didn't mean to respond."

"Of course it's when I bring up fucking Deku that you finally crack!" Bakugou said. The glint in his eye was triumphant, almost crazed. "You have to defend your precious Deku, don't you? 'My Deku would never! He understands me!'"

Iida blinked, turned forward once more, and kept walking. He would no longer take the bait Bakugou threw his way.

"You and Deku are a match made in heaven, aren't you," Bakugou said, at Iida's heels again. "When did you two get together, anyway? Before or after the Stain thing? Probably after. I'm sure it brought the two of you very close."

Iida kept walking, gritting his teeth. It was getting very difficult to resist correcting Bakugou's strange misconceptions, but Iida knew that to respond was to fall into Bakugou's trap. He could only pick up the pace and hope they were close to the end of the maze.

"What's so good about him, anyway?" Bakugou said, his voice loud in the narrow, concrete hall. "What's he got that makes everyone love him so goddamn much? Really makes me wonder what you see in him. Is he good in bed?"

Iida felt his stomach churn. He found the only way he could stop himself from responding was to raise a hand to his mouth and bite the back of it - it would probably leave a mark, but not letting this turn into a full-blown fight was the only way they were going to complete this assignment. Iida was very, very close to simply punching Bakugou in the face. It helped to realize that, while these unkind questions were coming from Bakugou's mouth, it was not really Bakugou saying them; under normal circumstances, they would remain far beneath the surface, simmering, unasked.

Iida pressed on. He was glad there were no enemies or puzzles within the maze; putting one foot in front of the other was already nearly more than he could take.

"That must be it," Bakugou said, the sneer audible in his voice. "He must really suck your dick-"

Iida wished he had earplugs, that he was better at tuning this out, because, very suddenly, it all became too much; he felt his stomach give an awful lurch like he was about to vomit. "Stop talking about Midoriya that way!" Iida snapped, turning around to face Bakugou again - hating himself for stopping, but completely unable to continue onwards. "He has many, many good qualities, which you should be able to see by now. You more so than any of us, considering all he's done for you!"

"That doesn't mean you've got to fuck him," Bakugou said, his face wild, his teeth visible like an animal baring its fangs. "What's he got that I don't have, anyways?"

Iida's feeling of anger gave way in an instant to a rush of surprise, so sudden he laughed aloud. "Midoriya and I are not 'fucking,'" Iida said, amazed, "and - I - Bakugou, what does this mean?"

"You're not?"

"We certainly are not. We never have. Midoriya is my dear friend, but our relationship is entirely platonic." Iida paused, knowing he should keep walking, but feeling like he was very close to discovering something big - and if he didn't discover it now, it would almost certainly be lost to him forever. "Bakugou, what does that mean? When you said-"

"I know what I said," Bakugou growled. His face was red. "Fuck, I hate him, I was jealous of him, I guess I don't really need to be anymore, do I."

"You were jealous of Midoriya because you thought he and I were… together?" Iida could actually see the effort it took Bakugou not to respond - he seemed almost to be vibrating. "Does this mean you want to-"

"Come on," Bakugou said, knocking Iida aside and running past him down the hall, "let's finish this damn test before we pass out."

"Bakugou!" Iida said, taken by surprise. "Bakugou, wait!"

* * *

They were closer to the end than Iida had even dared to hope. Running, it only took them about ten minutes to reach it - and they were too out of breath to argue with one another, meaning no more stopping. The whole time, Iida couldn't help running their conversation through his mind in an almost feverish haze. Did Bakugou's words mean what they seemed to mean? Did Bakugou want to be with Iida? Iida didn't think it was a lie - he wasn't sure Bakugou would be capable of obfuscating anything under the circumstances - but he also knew it wasn't something Bakugou would have said any other time. There'd been real pain on his face, like the words were being torn out of him against his will.

At the end of the maze, there was a trapdoor in the ground. This one was made of wood, not concrete, but Bakugou hesitated in front of it, waiting for Iida to catch up. "What if there's another level beneath this one?" he said, staring at it. "I don't know if I could handle that."

"I couldn't either, but we just have to continue, if we possibly can. There's no way to turn back now." Iida lifted the door, which swung open easily. There was another ladder, which he climbed down first, Bakugou a few seconds behind.

The room they entered was low-ceilinged, and felt almost homey. The walls were wood-paneled, the floor carpeted. And, for the first time, they saw a person - a middle-aged man with a round face and glasses, book in his hands. He stared as they came down the ladder, then rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses and yawned.

"Is this your fucking Quirk?" Bakugou said, as soon as he'd noticed the man. "Can you turn it off? It's driving me nuts!"

"Oh, sure," the man said mildly. In a second the feeling was gone, lifted like a heavy weight. Instantly Iida felt fully in control of his faculties, composed, alert - hungry and tired, sure, but no longer nearly as annoyed as he'd been a second ago. He breathed a sigh of relief.

"Question for you two," the man said. He sounded bored. "Your teacher wants me to ask all the participants something."

"Get it over with!" Bakugou said, and Iida remembered what he'd said at the beginning of the assignment - that he'd make the man fight him. Iida certainly didn't think this man, whose clothes were nicely ironed and business-casual, would be willing to take Bakugou on.

The man just rolled his eyes at Bakugou's harsh tone. "The question is: What is my Quirk?"

"It…" Iida began speaking, then hesitated, looking at Bakugou for confirmation. Bakugou's face was blank, his arms crossed - he wasn't going to interrupt, so Iida continued. "I believe your Quirk has to do with our inhibitions. It prevents us from filtering ourselves. It has to do with proximity - the closer we got to your location, the stronger it was."

"Right," the man said. "Alright, you can go. Elevator's behind me. The passcode is 612."

"Wait," Iida said, seeing Bakugou glance his way from the corner of his eye. "I have a question." The man raised his eyebrows in invitation. "What does it mean if someone feels the Quirk more so than others? If one of us was affected more strongly - does that mean anything?"

"It affects everyone in the same location the same," the man said, sounding mildly annoyed that Iida was taking up more of his time. "If one of you noticed it more, maybe that person had more inhibitions to start with." He gave Iida a significant look. "Anyways, please leave, I'm going to turn my Quirk back on. There's another group two levels up right now, and I really shouldn't even have paused it for this long."

"I understand. Thank you," Iida said, feeling no less confused than before.

The elevator ride up was completely silent.

Later, after they'd reported back to Aizawa, after they'd gone their separate ways, Iida grabbed dinner and retreated to his room alone to think. He saw some of his friends in the common room, Uraraka and Tsuyu and Midoriya, but decided to just give a brief hello and excuse himself. He had a great deal to think about.

Seeing Midoriya's face brought Bakugou's words back to the forefront of Iida's mind. What's he got that I don't have? The only conclusion Iida could draw from all of it was that Bakugou really did have feelings for him. The thought was startling. A day ago, Iida would have laughed it off as an impossibility.

He spent an hour alone, gathering his thoughts, then left his room and headed to Bakugou's.

When Iida knocked on the door, he heard Bakugou call out from within: "That's you, Four-Eyes, isn't it."

"Yes."

"Come in."

Surprised, Iida entered. Bakugou was sprawled on his back on the bed, head resting on his folded arms. "You're not going to tell me to go away?" Iida asked.

"What's the point," Bakugou said. He sounded tired. "There's no way to avoid this conversation, whether it's now or some other time."

"You probably know what I wish to speak about."

Bakugou pushed himself into a sitting position. "I'm not an idiot," he said. "Just get it over with."

"What you said in there," Iida began, speaking slowly and choosing his words with great care - it felt nice to actually be able to do so - "did you mean it? The part about you being-"

"I know what part you mean," Bakugou said quickly. "Yeah, I did. It wasn't as if I could lie, could I?"

Iida had suspected as much, but it felt good to receive confirmation. "I understand that they were things you would've never said under normal circumstances, and so they may have come out, ah, differently than intended - considering they were not intended to come out at all." He winced at his inelegant phrasing. "But if dating me is something you would, in fact, be wanting to do… I would not be opposed."

Bakugou looked at him sharply, eyes wide in surprise. "What?"

"I would not be against the idea of dating you," Iida repeated. "If you wish to try-"

"You didn't have any feelings for me down there," Bakugou said, jumping to his feet. "If you did, you would've said so. So you're - you're mocking me or something, aren't you?"

"I've always had a great deal of respect for you, Bakugou. I wouldn't dream of mocking you in that way." Iida stared him down, glad to have the height advantage. "You're correct in that it was not a romantic interest I held, but, in much the same way you mentioned your opinion of me changing after certain revelations, I found that when I reexamined my feelings in light of what you told me, I was not opposed. To a romantic relationship, I mean." Iida was glad they were out of the reach of the Quirk; he knew, had they had this conversation during the test, he would have said something along the lines of I always thought you despised me, but knowing you don't makes me see you differently.

"My opinion of you didn't change," Bakugou said quietly.

"Hmm?"

"I don't really think of you any differently because of what you said." He shrugged, not meeting Iida's eyes. "Anyway, so you're serious? You want to…" He swallowed and raised his chin. "Even after what I said?"

"If you said those things under normal circumstances, it would be much harder to forgive. But those were not normal circumstances - I felt that much myself." Iida looked down, thinking of how he himself had almost behaved during the test. "I was very nearly violent with you at the end."

"Really?"

"The things you were saying about poor Midoriya - I was almost ready to punch you for that. They were completely unwarranted." Iida shook his head. "I don't doubt you had violent thoughts about me down there as well. The test was designed to get us under each other's skin."

"Actually," Bakugou said, "I didn't."

Iida looked at him closely. He had no idea if Bakugou was lying or not, but he decided it didn't matter all that much - it was fine if he was. It was his right, really, to tell small white lies.

How nice it was, Iida thought, to be in a place where they could lie again, where they could hide again - where the words didn't come pouring out of him like a waterfall, messy and uncontrolled. It had felt like he'd lost his dignity along with his filter. "Let's say, tomorrow evening, dinner?" Iida said, meeting Bakugou's eyes and smiling. "How does seven sound?"

"Okay," Bakugou said. "That - that works."

"I'll meet you in front of the building," Iida said, turning to leave. "We can decide where to go from there." He hesitated at the door, wondering if there was more to say; but at the last minute he shook his head and left. No, he thought, there was no need to get everything out at once. What needed to be said had already been spoken; the rest would come later, in its time.


End file.
